


The Rooftop

by DETSANTlAGO



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Brooklyn Nine-Nine - Freeform, F/M, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Season 1, The Bet, amy santiago - Freeform, jake peralta - Freeform, rooftop, s1ep13, season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-15
Packaged: 2020-01-14 16:53:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18480400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DETSANTlAGO/pseuds/DETSANTlAGO
Summary: Amy's thoughts during the rooftop stakeout with Jake. (Set during The Bet, s1ep13)





	The Rooftop

On any other given day, Amy would be more than happy for crime to take a break in Brooklyn. It would give her time to fully catch up on paperwork, properly file everything, tidy her desk, and maybe even take an extended lunch break if she was really feeling it. 

Thank God crime never took a break, though. Crime got her out of a plastic dress and a terribly planned out “date” (if the itinerary even counted as such) with her detective partner. Her thoughtful (even if it was for the wrong reasons), funny partner that always knew how to make her laugh as fast as it took for him to push her buttons and drive her completely up a wall. He was good at two things, she knew: annoying her in record time, and solving crimes. But tonight revealed a third Peralta guarantee: he was surprisingly decent at holding a real, human, actual conversation. She found, through being stuck on this rooftop with him, that he could be very welcome company when he wasn’t an asshole. He was funny, made the conversation interesting, and for once he wasn’t trying to piss her off just to give her a shit-eating grin as she stared daggers into his face. Dare she said it, she was actually enjoying her time stuck on the roof with Jake Peralta.  
As she looked at him, smiling as he told an animated story about how he acquired his prized car, she started noticing the details she otherwise wouldn’t notice in the glaring, fluorescent lights above their desks that should definitely reveal every single thing about him. Here, though, under the dim glow only provided by New York’s unfortunate light pollution, she noticed the way his eyes tended to catch fragments of light and bounce them off his irises, creating a comforting honey brown that reminded her of a warm blanket she could just wrap herself right up in. She noticed the way his unruly curls bounced as he animated his stories with his body, the way they flopped across his forehead in waves that rivaled the Brighton Beach tides that rolled in and out every single day, without fail. She noticed his smile, and how with every lift of the corners of his mouth revealed a set of perfectly crooked teeth and just the smallest, boyish tooth gap that was a little endearing, she couldn’t lie. She noticed the way his hands flexed and relaxed as he spoke, the veins in his hands disappearing and reappearing and making it a little hotter on the roof than it had to be. She noticed that he was genuinely able to talk to her without being mean, or making her the butt end of the joke. She liked talking to him this way. She liked this version of Jake, the one that lit up the dark with his bright eyes and actually kind of gave a shit about what she had to say. 

`The world beyond the edge of the building suddenly seemed to fall away, reducing itself to a hazy black as she realized that she didn’t really want to leave this rooftop for a while. This version of the world, this one where it was just him, her, and the moon, she could see them together. Not just because they were the only people there, but because they could actually be happy in one another’s company. She could imagine his hands and hers, holding, touching, reveling in the fact that they should have listened to each other long before this date-turned-work event. She could imagine them being happy together, sharing a life together, and with that realization the world built itself again, skyscrapers erecting themselves back towards the clouds, lights flickering back on in no pattern at all, stars and the moon hanging themselves back in place, roads unrolling again and paving themselves as cars whirred back to life, bringing the honking and yelling back to serve as a background to their conversation. In this new version of the world she’d just rebuilt in her head, Jake and Amy existed beyond this rooftop. They existed in her bed at eleven AM on a Saturday, half-clothed, both of them too wrapped up in each other to want to get up and make breakfast. They existed in that little Italian spot near the precinct she always walked past on her stroll from the parking garage to her desk that she always wanted to try. They existed a year or two from now, carrying precious knowledge about each other they have yet to learn today. They existed beyond the reach of the rooftop they were currently stuck on, and she couldn’t wait to get down. 

The revelation kind of terrified her, if she was completely honest. She had spent much of her career at the nine-nine completely hating his guts, it was hard for her heart to catch up with the images conjuring themselves up in her head. But she could see her heart shifting, with this new facet of Jake revealed to her, she realized she could fall in love with this one easily. The one that laughed with her and made her laugh sound that much more joyful, the one that actually listened and hummed every once in a while to let her know that he was internalizing her words, the one that looked at her a few seconds too long for it to just be a spacing-out moment. She could love the Jake that loved her back, if that version of him ever presented itself in front of her. Maybe she was watching that manifestation come to life in real time, on this milk delivery crate, right now. Maybe he was there all along, a gentleman disguised in a wrinkled flannel and loose tie and a smug smirk serving as his mask every time he successfully elicited an eye roll from her. 

Maybe this version of them has been existing all along, and they were just now stripping it down and revealing it to one another. Maybe it was about time they finally got to that point, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is my first ever published work (very scary and very exciting)!!! Please feel free to leave your love + thoughts on the writing + any pointers you might have! I hope that by finally putting my work out there, I'll grow as a writer.


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